In recent days, Donald Trump Jr. has twice “liked” tweets posted by right-wing extremists suggesting that young David Hogg, one of the leaders in the Parkland student movement, is an FBI plant “running cover for his dad who works as an FBI agent at the Miami office,” which mishandled a tip about the shooter who took 17 lives.
Not coincidentally, that theory dovetails with a similar theory propagated by Trump’s own father:
It’s true that Hogg’s father is -- or was -- an FBI agent. However, Kevin Hogg retired in 2014, long before the Parkland shooting, and he worked in Los Angeles not Miami. In other words -- and you probably knew this already -- the claims endorsed by Trump Jr. are utterly groundless.
And when the 17-year-old Hogg was given a chance to respond to the 40-year-old Trump Jr, here’s what he said:
“I just think it's a testament to the sick immaturity and broken state of our government when these people feel the need to peddle conspiracy theories about people that were in a school shooting where 17 people died, and it just makes me sick. It's immature, rude, and inhuman for these people to destroy the people trying to prevent the death of the future of America because they won't."
Folks, in terms of maturity, wisdom, common sense and decency, it’s not even a fair fight.
It's also worth remembering that in the Hans Christian Anderson classic fairy tale, while all the adults are proclaiming their admiration for the emperor’s fine clothes, it is a child who finally points at the naked man in astonishment and announces that he has no clothes.
I guess in the updated version, the emperor's media consultant would immediately accuse the child of being an actor paid by George Soros, and all the emperor’s sycophants would rush to social media to agree.
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